


Juniberry Drift

by ElementKitsune



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Ft. Machine Team BroTP, Pidge BB, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 22:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14459244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElementKitsune/pseuds/ElementKitsune
Summary: Quiet nights are calm nights, and Pidge is honestly surprised when Allura starts to join her. And then, over the course of those nights, she might have a dumb idea. After all, how frustrating could it be to create a synthetic juniberry?(the answer to that is very)





	Juniberry Drift

**Author's Note:**

> My fic for the Pidge BB (https://pidgebigbang.tumblr.com) on tumblr! Thanks to cheesecake (flute-piano.tumblr.com) for her awesome betaing, and minteasty (minteasty.tumblr.com) for being a lovely artist.

Pidge has narrowly (but  _ successfully _ ) escaped Shiro’s worrywart tendencies when Allura walks into the room.

“Princess!” Pidge blurts out, because it’s after a battle and even _Coran_ sleeps after a battle instead of running around the castle doing… whatever needs to be done to keep a giant flying alien space castle ship in “tip-top shape”, and also because Pidge has never been the best at hiding when she doesn’t _need_ _to_ need to.

Allura’s eyes widen the slightest bit, before her face morphsinto her  _ I am an alien warrior space princess you have nothing on me _ expression and she turns a raised eyebrow to Pidge.

“Pidge,” she greets, and the raised eyebrow is quickly exchanged for a knowing smile. “I assume you are refusing to get enough sleep again?”

Pidge shrugs and looks away, feeling a smirk creeping onto her mouth in the meantime. ( _ mirror neurons, _ Mom says in her brain.  _ When you see someone smile, they start to shoot off and make you want to smile back _ )

Pidge nods to the Mom in her head, and belatedly realizes that she’s accidentally answered Allura’s question when a laugh rings through the air, short and quiet but impossible to ignore.

“...yes,” Pidge says finally, because she’s dug her grave so she may as well lie in it. 

And, contrary to all of Pidge’s expectations (though she’s honestly not sure what those expectations  _ were _ ), Allura moves to sit down right next to her.

She doesn’t say anything. Just  _ whooshes _ over elegantly, with a smile on her face and the dress sliding over the floor and sits and there is something so  _ pretty _ about the way that she does it, so stupidly pretty that Pidge stares and replays the movements in her head to try and figure out what made it like that.

Eventually, she concludes that it’s just an Allura is Allura thing, and goes back to staring at her laptop in the room they’re in. The clacking starts to fill the empty (well, empty except for them, but sometimes it felt like people don’t really count with all the  _ space _ there is in the castle) room, and Pidge lets numbers string through her head, all ones and zeros and sound bytes converting to files to Matt’s favourite Disney songs.

Pidge is almost lulled into clacking simplicity, with the simple repetitive sound sending the working parts of her brain… well, to work, and the non-working parts of her brain to drift off until she’s just comfortable  _ sort of  _ **_there_ ** _ but not really _ kind of way, and that’s when Allura speaks and all the cogs in Pidge’s brain come to a screeching halt.

“This used to be a garden,” she says, slowly, surely, like every word has been drawn and measured and almost found wanting.

Pidge’s fingers move to the top of the computer screen, dance upon its edge before starting to move it closed. “What kind of plants did you grow?” she asks, and is more than a little surprised to hear the words exit her mouth.

Allura blinks at her, like the question had startled her too. (and who knows, maybe it had)

“...allolees,” she says at first. “They were... small, and pink like Chuchule’s fur, and had a scent that was frankly horrid. And then there were varishkas, deep purple and their petals so sharp that they made you bleed. And leneyas, big and white and could actually swallow Altean children whole!” Allura’s voice trails off for a second, and then she blinks blue-pink eyes and picks her words back up like she’d never dropped them in the first place. “There were others, of course, though they’ve all died after the cryosleep. But my favourites were juniberries.”

It doesn’t look like she’s looking at the dark room. Pidge sees Allura in the corner of her eye and it looks like she’s looking at Altea how it used to be, like she’s seeing the myriad flowers that had been here just ten thousand years ago. 

(something—something about just  _ looking _ at Allura feels wrong right now, when there is sleep in Pidge’s eyes and the past in Allura’s. So Pidge contents herself with sneaking peeks through her peripheral vision)

Pidge thinks that she could probably leave Allura like this, dreaming up memories, except there’s something in her that pokes her for  _ more more more what was it like I want to know more _ like it always does, and she’s less surprised when the next question falls out of her mouth.

“What did the juniberries look like?”

Allura  _ beams _ then, and Pidge is so—so—so  _ something _ that she almost doesn’t hear the answer. “They were about the size of my hand, with three petals each, and there was a white-grey band on each of them. They… used to grow in bunches, and I used to make flower creations with Father before…”

Pidge doesn’t say anything when she trails off this time. Just nods and stares with eyes that feel too big in her head, and tries not to  _ notice _ the way that Allura’s cape brushes against her arm with every breath.

(she fails)

(it’s a very noticeable cape brush against Pidge’s arm)

“Thank you for listening, paladin,” murmurs Allura, and there’s a lot of things that Pidge could say in response to that. Like,  _ it was a pleasure to listen _ or  _ of course princess _ or even  _ thank you for talking _ or something else, but Pidge doesn’t say any of those.

Instead, she says, “It’d be cool to talk like this again.” When her mouth snaps shut, Pidge goes back to working on her code.

Allura’s cape still brushes against her arm.

* * *

The second time Allura stumbles upon her, Pidge is still surprised, but significantly less so. 

It’s what amounts to daytime inside the castle, since the ceiling is glowing blue and the lights are shining enough to chase away the biggest shadows. The room is illuminated, and Pidge is able to enjoy the peace and quiet and utter dullness of it all.

And then the door slides open, and Allura pokes her head in.

There’s the awkward moment of  _ who what when where why _ that flashes through Pidge’s brain, but then she shifts and this seems to be taken as an invitation. So, Allura moves to sit beside her again, and Pidge determinedly clacks away on her keyboard because… she still isn’t entirely sure what to say after having a kind of heart-to-heart with Allura last time.

This silence is definitely one of the more awkward ones that Pidge has gone through.

Allura doesn’t really say anything, and neither does Pidge. They just.

They’re there.

This type of scene keeps on repeating, with Allura showing up while Pidge is hiding away in the ex-garden to do work, and it’s kinda—

At some point, Pidge wonders if she should find a new place to hide out, considering Allura starts showing up nightly (quintantly?) and always ends up sitting right next to Pidge, instead of honestly any other place in the room.

And like, it’s oddly nice once Pidge starts to get used to it. It just. Takes her four quintants to get used to it.

Then, after she gets used to it, everything seems to… shift. Allura starts to bring her tablet everyday, and scrolls through different missions reports (Pidge spots the one about when they’d touched down on the incredibly gooey planet, and tries not to think about how she felt like there was food goo in her armour for an entire specalian movement after it’d been deep cleaned) and it’s. Ridiculously relaxing.

It just is.

* * *

It’s maybe five quintants later of sitting in silence turned awkward to peaceful when Pidge finally ends up turning to Allura and going: “Why did you start hanging out here anyway?”

Allura’s finger pauses from where it’s scrolling, and Altean characters slow to stillness on the screen. The silence she broke comes back in its ever waiting awkward glory, and Pidge is quietly embracing the feeling of  _ oops my mouth went faster than my mind again _ before Allura’s finger touches back down onto the tablet.

And she sighs, something seeming so startlingly human that it feels like Allura’s doing it more to communicate and less of an actual  _ need _ to.

“This was my favourite room,” she says, words brisk and clear like splashing cold water onto Pidge’s face.. That— 

That somehow says enough.

And she doesn’t really know  _ why _ Allura has told her about this, but. But she thinks she gets the feeling that’s there, something poking at Pidge’s side and giving her enough awareness to know it’s there.

(though she doesn’t have enough awareness to figure out what to  _ do  _ about it)

So, “Okay,” she says, because words are hard and Pidge has always been better with numbers even when they’re swimming in front of her eyes because dyscalculia can be a quiznaking quiznak sometimes. “Okay.”

And Pidge goes back to messing with software and dreaming up ways to outgeek Hunk in their ongoing friendly competition (although admittedly, that competition had some not-so-friendly mishaps like when they turned the kitchen into a murder zone by accident) of seeing how much they could improve the castle.

Allura’s finger swipes against the tablet, and both electronics start to whir softly.

Out of the corner of her eye, Pidge sees pictures of alien flowers.

( _ oh, _ she thinks,  _ oh, _ even though it feels like she shouldn’t be looking at something that’s long, long gone)

Allura’s hand shakes for a moment, sharp and sudden and smooth again in an instant.

(Pidge turns her gaze away, and doesn’t look back again)

* * *

There’s another quiet night hanging out in the garden, and honestly?

Pidge is kinda bored. She’s finished all that she could with Castle Improvement Stage Only Coran Bothers to Keep Count Anymore, the latest mission has already had the data decoded and uploaded into Allura’s tablet for perusal at her leisure, the mice have threatened to steal all her wires if Pidge does anything strenuous for her mind after being in a healing pod for three days  _ after _ said latest mission, and Pidge is  _ way _ more than kinda bored now that she thinks on it.

And instead of doing something like sleeping off her growing headache, she’s sitting in the former garden while Allura reads her tablet in silence. Because Pidge is apparently attached to this new routine, even though it’s the most mentally chatty instance in her day now because she doesn’t know if she can really speak aloud without disturbing whatever force made Allura start to hang out with her every evening. (or whatever was the Altean equivalent of an evening, anyway)

She shifts, shirt tightening at her shoulders before loosening again, and then Pidge stares at her computer. And then she looks at Allura. And when Allura turns her head to face Pidge with her eyebrow raised perfectly like Hunk’s when he’s in one of his  _ what did I tell you modes, _ Pidge allows her damaged filter to be shoved to the side in favour of letting her mouth go lightspeed.

“You said the juniberry is your favourite flower, right?” she asks, and Allura takes a moment to blink before Pidge steals the next one to ask—“Can I see a picture, or a hologram of it?”

Before saying anything, Allura bristles up like a cat, and Pidge can almost see a tail swishing predatorily and teeth bared back into a snarl before she blinks and the image pops like balloons at a birthday party. 

Allura blinks (and it feels inhuman in a way that’s hard to describe, like seeing a copy so good at copying that it feels closer to uncanny), before breaking out into a smile.

“So you  _ would _ like to discuss flora,” she says triumphantly, and now it’s Pidge’s turn to stare blankly back at her, before her mind goes an inch, a yard, a mile a minute and she remembers when Allura had started this routine and  _ oh _ —

“Were you waiting for me to ask?”

The smile, softer now but still sharp on the edges, points towards a resounding yes. Then Allura turns back towards her tablet and pulls up what Pidge assumes is a lenaya, considering there was a picture of a klanmüirl next to the flower for scale, and, erm. The flower is definitely big and white and capable of swallowing things whole.

“I was swallowed by a leneya once,” Allura says almost fondly, and Pidge looks at her in disbelief, even as her hands curl into the hem of her turtleneck to keep herself from reaching out to do things like poke the flower on the screen or brush a stray piece of hair back to tuck it behind Allura’s pointy ear.

(that piece of hair is curled right next to Allura’s blue-pink eyes and it manages to be effortlessly distracting in capturing Pidge’s attention. Maybe a bit like Allura)

“How’d you get out?” Pidge steals another glance at the lenaya, tries to remember she’s supposed to be looking at the flower and not the flower lover. “That looks like it can swallow the  _ klanmüirl _ whole.”

That earns her a snicker, before Allura gives her a conspiratorial wink, kind of like the one she’d given before Pidge’s peanut speech. “I stayed in the lenaya for about half the quintant before Father and Coran finally found me. They discovered me sleeping inside of it and were both furious and relieved—” the story is cut off by Allura’s laughter, and Pidge feels a smirk matching Allura’s (honestly a bit evil) smile come to her face.

( _ Mirror neurons, _ says the mom in her head again. And then she thinks of how Mom would smile at her right before utterly destroying Matt and Dad in card games, and Pidge’s smirk grows wider)

“What did they do when they found you?” Pidge asks, and that might be the moment where she realizes she’s having an unexpected amount of fun.

Allura’s smile turns diabolical, before going back into the typical expression that Pidge has learned to expect with an alien warrior space princess in her midst. Her hands fold into her lap, her shoulders stand stiff, and Allura says with her best diplomatic voice even as her mouth twitches—

“They burst into tears, the both of them.”

Pidge takes the moment to imagine a young Coran and young Allura's dad losing their minds out of worry, before finally discovering Allura sleeping peacefully inside a lenaya and starts snickering despite herself because it might be a little horrible to laugh at the Coran and Allura’s dad of the past but also the story is just kinda  _ funny _ in that way that all things are when you're nearly at the brink of exhaustion and then—

And then, Allura tacks on another sentence like an afterthought. “After that, they kept me inside the castle for an entire phoeb unless one of them was supervising me.”

And hey, it's probably not as funny as Pidge's tired brain thinks it is, but she bursts out  _ cackling _ , little giggles escaping like air bubbles until Pidge can hear herself laughter with every breath.

And she laughs hard enough to land her head on Allura’s shoulder, staying there for maybe just a little bit longer than she should have.

(it feels a little bit like home, to laugh in the dark and have someone to laugh with you)

A thought slips into Pidge's head, slow and sneaky as it starts to gradually appear.

(she isn't the only one who needs a taste of home)

* * *

After that thought pops into her head, Pidge wants to start working on it. Problem is, she has absolutely  _ no _ idea what to do. She thinks that Hunk  _ does _ have his piece of home, set in the kitchen and in Yellow’s hanger with pieces of errant circuitry.

Lance’s is probably when he takes his time for a spa day, because Pidge remembers walking into his room while Lance puts on a face mask and seeing him completely and totally relaxed. He makes his own home, time to time, and she thinks he’s good.

For Keith, she supposes that the training room is enough? He’s in there a lot anyway, and when he’s out, he ends up sticking closer to Shiro than the rest of them. (she knows that they’re all paladins of Voltron, but, well. Keith’s the loner. He seems perfectly content with just Shiro)

And Shiro doesn’t… he’s not always at home with  _ them _ . He can be comfy, sure, but Pidge thinks that he’s sometimes just thinking too much about being a leader, because when she dredges up her memories, he’s only  _ consistently _ relaxed when he’s with Black. And that’s something she’s only discovered by supreme accidents when she’s fallen asleep in Green and is ready to leave but ends up finding a Shiro instead.

That’s when Coran usually comes in, she realizes, and now that she thinks of it, when is Coran _ not  _ around? It feels like he’s always around the next corner, ready with an anecdote about his past to ramble on about even while he’s performing maintenance on whichever part of the castle need it the most. Except, he’s usually doing those while roping people in, even if people usually encompasses Lance and the mice.

And now that she’s really  _ thinking _ on it, Allura tends to be helping him out too, even if it’s just little things like making the castle thrum with quintessence and be ready when Coran and Hunk and Pidge are about to test something out.

Everyone’s made a bit of home for themselves. Everyone’s...

Everyone’s covered, she realizes, and a pensive frown comes onto her face. Not exactly by Pidge, but everyone’s given themselves a little bit of home. And well, Allura’s home is the castle. Pidge can’t really do anything for her.

So, left with no plans and just a wiggling feeling of dissatisfaction, Pidge dismisses her idea. Maybe she’d be able to revisit it later.

* * *

It starts haunting her brain, much to Pidge’s  _ not _ amusement, and Pidge mostly realizes that when she wakes up from her bed with thoughts of trading stories with Allura and the way that the princess’ eyes had lit up when the mice had came around and agreed to act out some stories.

_ Oh, _ she thinks, with no small amount of dawning horror.  _ Oh no I like her. _

(there is a Matt laughing in her head, eyes crinkled into a smile and wheezing in air from how much he’s laughing)

(Pidge quietly swats the Matt in her head)

(she can still almost hear him laughing)

* * *

To be honest, the evening after, Pidge considers the idea of not showing up to the garden and just. Not showing up sounds good. Maybe forever. (or at least until the crush is gone)

Then her Inner Matt waggles his eyebrows and there is  _ something _ in that imaginary Matt that makes Pidge’s spine turn ramrod straight and makes her determined to show up. She’s not gonna run away from Allura. She’s not.

Pidge  _ nearly  _ regrets her decision when she’s at the former garden.

Allura is already set up with her tablet, and gazes up through long lashes and the mice’s latest hair style. This time, they’ve fluffed up the top but straightened the ends so her hair looks a bit like one of those long pieces of cloth that kids in elementary school played parachute with - a giant mass of buns in the centre, and gradually becoming less bun-y as the hairdo starts to unravel.

She also  _ still _ looks gorgeous, and this is something that feels distinctly unfair, but you know what, Pidge is used to it.

So, she plops down next to Allura, opens her computer, closes her computer, and turns. “Did I tell you about Gunther and Bae Bae?” she ends up asking, and Allura blinks at her. It’s slow and deliberate, like a cat’s.

“Not yet,” she answers, and Pidge just—

_ Launches _ into a story, about how Gunther had been their old dog and already practically ancient by dog standards when she’d been born and somehow managed to survive long enough that Pidge could still remember silly things like how whenever she’d reached towards him with chubby toddler hands, Gunther would flop onto his back and start licking her cheek even as she’d attempted to rub his belly the best she could.

And that after Gunther died, baby Pidge had cried for days and a few years later, they’d gotten Bae Bae who was the same breed out of chance, and Pidge had grown up with Bae Bae and when she gets home she knows that her goal is to first find Mom and tell her where she went and show her Matt and Dad but secondary objective is to find Bae Bae and hug the daylight out of him and she knows that she’s spilling thoughts like sand in a broken hourglass but—

“That’s what my home is like,” she says after, and her breath catches in her throat. “And, uh. I wanted to tell you about it.”

And Pidge doesn’t really  _ know _ why she just spilled everything about her dogs and maybe a little about Mom and Matt and Dad, but there’s a feeling like a weight’s been lifted off her chest and Allura is leaning in and Pidge waits—

“It sounds beautiful,” says Allura like she really means it, and the moment feels so startlingly real with her heart hammering in her chest and Allura’s face close enough that Pidge can make out the tiny scaling detailing of her markings.

She’s so  _ gone _ for Allura, she realizes, somewhere in between exchanging stories of their home planets and Allura attempting to help Pidge learn how to finally pronounce klanmüirl. (somehow, having a crush on a magic alien warrior space princess doesn’t feel as terrifying as it did this morning)

(and that’s something that she’s treasuring)

And it’s later on, when Pidge is nodding off, with Allura by her side and laptop on her lap (with a red-tinted screen for eye strain) when the thought occurs to her.

It’s an  _ insidious _ thought—not particularly in the harmful sense, but more insidious and sneaky in the way that it quietly settles into her mind like a blanket until it finally pops out to say to her:  _ What if I make her a juniberry? _

Of course, Pidge’s first reaction is to wonder how the quiznak would she make a synthetic juniberry, but her second is to think that Allura might actually like that a lot considering her favourite flower is the juniberry, and her third is to back that up considering the garden used to be her favourite place and—

_ Damn it, _ thinks Pidge.  _ I like Allura and I’m gonna make her a juniberry. _

(spoiler alert: it turns out to be kinda  _ very... _ )

( _ interesting) _


End file.
